Raw chicken and turkey can carry the bacteria Salmonella and Campylobacter on the surface. If the meat is handled and cooked appropriately, these bacteria will be killed and won’t cause a problem for your family. But if you don’t store, handle, and cook your poultry correctly, you could be exposing your family to a serious food-borne illness from one of these bacteria.

Some people think that by rinsing chicken or turkey under running water before they cook it, they are removing any bacteria that might be present. Actually, all you’re doing is spreading that bacteria around. The bacteria are carried in the water that runs and splashes off the chicken. Bacteria can be carried in very small drops of water, so small that you can’t see the drops. Rinsing chicken in your sink can result in bacterial contamination of the sink, counter, floor, and any raw foods nearby. Watch this animation with GermVision for a demonstration.

A lot of the comments on that video have said that all you need to do is turn the strength of the water down to avoid the splashing. Unfortunately, that’s not true. While turning down the strength of the water will minimize the splashing that you can see, there is still plenty of splashing that you can’t see. And even that tiny amount of splashing can spread bacteria all over your kitchen.

Imagine that you’re getting ready to prepare a salad on the counter next to your sink, and the bacteria from the chicken splashes onto the cutting board. You put some vegetables on the cutting board, and now they have the bacteria on them. You use a knife to cut the veggies, and now the bacteria is on the knife. You put the knife down on the counter and the veggies into a bowl. Now the bacteria are on the counter and in your bowl. The bowl goes to the kitchen table, and takes the bacteria with it. Since you haven’t cooked the salad, your family eats the bacteria when they eat their salad.

This type of low-level bacterial contamination isn’t likely to cause a problem for most people. As with any other illness, people who are very young, very old, pregnant, have another disease, or are immunocompromised are very sensitive to developing food poisoning from these bacteria.

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